Sermon on Luke 18:1-8

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

If you haven’t noticed already, you probably will soon: I find most of Jesus’ parables perplexing.

I might think I know a parable well and then I find a detail that changes the meaning for me. Or, like today’s—it seems pretty straightforward (if even an unjust judge will cave under the widow’s persistence, how much more will God answer our prayers?), but then the implications unsettle me.

This parable seems to promise that God will answer our prayers and quickly. But so often, our prayers seem to go into a void.

If God will “grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night,” then one might start asking, “Am I not one of God’s chosen ones?”

And if God “will quickly grant justice to them,” then why is there so much injustice in the world?

Early Jesus followers were sometimes martyred for their faith—was that just?I don’t imagine the ultimate collapse of the Roman Empire felt like God was answering their prayers for justice quickly. Justice, if it comes at all, never seems to come quickly.

This parable has troubling implications.

It often seems like God doesn’t answer our prayers: whether someone praying for their loved one to be cured of cancer or suffering people praying for an end to war.

Faithful people whisper their deepest vulnerabilities to God every moment.

And many are disappointed. I would be surprised if any of us in this room or listening online haven’t experienced that disappointment.

I don’t know why some people receive miracles and others don’t.

I don’t know why some prayers seem to get dramatic answers and others don’t.

I don’t know why God sometimes seems silent.

I do know that if that’s ever happened to you, you’re not alone.

St. Teresa of Calcutta, or Mother Teresa, spent decades feeling God’s absence.[1]

Her namesake, St. Thérèse de Lisieux wrote that “God hides, is wrapped in darkness.”

Martin Luther struggled with a sense of spiritual despair throughout his life.[2]

St. John of the Crosswrote about a “dark night of the soul”—a period of feeling that God is absent. It wasn’t just any sense of spiritual dryness, but a specific type that would lead to a deeper relationship with God, distinct from other feelings of God’s absence.

These ancestors in faith and many more have felt that God was silent and absent. They have felt that pain. It’s not a sign of being a “bad Christian.” It’s a common experience for even the most faithful people.

I don’t know why people have to go through it, but sometimes it seems that enduring a season like that can lead to a closer union with God.

Sometimes enduring a season like that is more like Jacob wrestling with God than Jesus’ explanation that God will quickly grant justice.

Jacob was a trickster.

He was named Jacob because when he was born, he was grasping onto the heel of his twin brother Esau, like he was trying to hold him back and get born first. Jacob means “he takes by the heel or he supplants.”

When Jacob and Esau were older, Jacob got Esau to sell him his birthright over a bowl of stew.

When their father Isaac was dying, their mother, Rachel, helped Jacob trick Isaac into blessing Jacob instead of Esau, his firstborn.

Jacob fled his brother’s wrath and stayed with his uncle Laban. He and Laban got into a cycle of tricking and cheating each other, until Jacob left and sought reconciliation with his brother.

He understandably thought Esau might decide to kill him, so he sent a bunch of gifts to appease him. Still, he wasn’t sure this was enough, so he sent his family and his belongings across a stream. If Esau and his men found him, his family would be safe.

So, as our reading begins, Jacob was alone in the dark with his fears. Maybe he prayed. Maybe he prayed for God to grant him justice. Maybe trickster Jacob prayed that he wouldn’t receive justice, but instead mercy.

One way or another, God met him—not with a comforting hug or a word of peace—but instead wrestled with him. Like the widow in our parable, Jacob was persistent. He wouldn’t let go until the stranger blessed him. They wrestled for hours, and the stranger even dislocated Jacob’s hip, but he still wouldn’t let go.

As dawn broke, the stranger gave Jacob a new name: Israel, meaning “the one who strives with God.” And Jacob limped his way into the future and became one of the great ancestors of God’s people.

Sometimes, prayer is less like God quickly granting us justice and more like wrestling, hanging on for dear life, not knowing what the result will be, but trusting that there will eventually be a blessing, even if it means being painfully changed through the process.

Rosemary Wahtola Trommer wrote a poem that describes prayer similarly:

“Sometimes a Prayer”

Sometimes a prayer

arrives like a stock phrase—

like well-worn beads of syllables

others have strung into smooth

and beautiful strands.

But the prayers that have saved me

are the ones that arrive like burrs.

They hurt a little, hook into my skin,

such stubborn, dogged prayers.

They make me a living agent

of spreading their seeds.

And with every move I make,

they don’t let me forget

they are here.

Maybe our parable today is less about changing God’s actions through prayer and more about changing our own.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like God is quickly granting justice, but as we persist in our prayers for it, we live in more just and merciful ways. Maybe we are changed in the process of persistent prayer; maybe we will limp away with a new name.

Justice doesn’t seem to come quickly, but like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” No matter what comes our way or how dim the good in our world seems to be, we can cling to the belief that God wins in the end and that God’s justice and mercy will be made complete.

As we wait for that day, maybe our stubbornness will bend the arc a little more toward justice.

And if you find yourself in a dry spell or a dark night of the soul, if God feels absent, know that you are in good company. You’re not alone—turn to your friends in Christ here, turn to wise, spiritual people in your life, and of course, I invite you to talk to me. You may not find answers, but you can find someone to lean on. That’s why we have each other. Being a follower of Jesus isn’t a solo journey.

So, as you go about your week, whether you feel God quickly answering your prayers, whether God feels absent, whether your prayers feel ineffective, or whether the world seems hopelessly unjust:

Be like the persistent widow: insist on justice.

And be like Jacob: don’t let go without God’s blessing.

[1]https://www.franciscanmedia.org/st-anthony-messenger/mother-teresa-a-saint-who-conquered-darkness/

[2]https://ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/scaeranfechtung.pdf